Stop Wondering What Questions To Ask When Hiring a VP Marketing/ CMO

CEOs and investors often don't understand the nuts and bolts of marketing. It means when interviewing; it becomes a sort of "unknown unknown". To help on that front, I have collated a set of questions you should be asking.

GENERAL VP QUESTIONS

• What are the top 3 things we should upgrade in marketing?
• What “commit” did you hold in your last roles?  How much of it did you meet?
• How have you worked with the sales team in the past?
• What should our marketing budget be?
• How big a team do we need?  
• What have you done to increase win rates?
• What should we do to market to each of our top 3 segments?
• What agencies would you bring in to help us?
• How much should we focus on building up brand and product awareness?
• What sort of customer marketing should we do?

SOFT SKILLS

• How did the culture at your last company empower or disempower you?
• What were the characteristics of the best boss you’ve ever had?
• Describe how you’ve had a conflict with a co-worker.
• What kind of feedback do you expect in this role, and how often do you expect it

DEMAND GEN SKILLS

• What type of metrics did you use to measure your performance?
• Pretend you have a funnel showing 10,000 website visitors, 500 leads, 50 opportunities, and ten new enterprise customers. What are the levers or things you suggest to improve those marketing metrics?
• Keeping it high level, can you describe the lead management process at your current company; how did you model the marketing funnel, what are its different stages, and how is the handoff to the sales team (field, inside sales, SDR etc.)?
• What’s the conversion rate from marketing/automated generated lead to opportunity/sales qualified lead? And where in your marketing funnel do you think there is an opportunity for improvement?
• Do you measure your marketing sourced pipeline? If so, how much of the marketing team generates a month, and what per cent of the sales pipeline does this represent?
• How much time does it take, on average, for a marketing-qualified lead to convert into an opportunity or sales-qualified lead? How do you work with the sales team and inside sales team? How compliant are they with the SLA? What feedback do they have on the process?
• What’s your cost per opportunity?
• What do you think about campaigns? What’s your framework for developing campaigns? What are some of the main/overarching campaigns running currently at your company?
• Can you describe your marketing campaign planning process?
• How is your team at your current company organised, and why?
• How do you build your marketing budget and allocate your marketing mix?
• What are your target customer segments?
• How do you set goals for yourself, your team, and team members, and what do these goals look like?

HAPPY HIRING :)